This past July I spent the month in Europe photographing some great events and locations. First, I attended the tenth edition of the Worldwide Festival in Sète, France. I then caught three stages of the 2015 Tour de France in the Pyrénées, ending the trip with a week in Sicily to wind down.

Port de Sète

Sète, a small fishing village and resort creates the perfect setting for the festival as it has done for the past decade. This area of the Mediterranean is home to a vast amount of oyster and mussel beds. With a network of canals bringing the experience of the port and fishing activity right into the town centre. The headliners for this edition were musical legends Roy Ayers, Louis Vega, DJ Harvey, and Laurent Garnier.

These were the start of the mountain stages so the climbing was intense as was the scenery. Driving in the Béarn region I passed through so many picturesque small towns such as Arette, attached to the ski resort La Pierre Saint-Martin, the finishing line for stage 10 at an elevation of 1,766 m (5,794 ft).

For the first time I shot with the Canon 11-24mm f/4L USM ultra-wide zoom lens.The broad expanse of the landscapes allowed me to maximize the extremely wide focal length of this lens.

Pierefitte-Nestalas

Here are more photos from the Tour de France:

Once in Sicily I found some more beaches including some very remote and exclusive ones. I took the hydrofoil over to the Aeolian Island of Stromboli to experience the black sand beaches which are created from the island’s active volcano. It erupts roughly every twenty minutes and I managed to catch a few shots of it sailing past. Swimming in these waters can barely be described in photos: